Drugging our kids: Children in California’s foster care system are prescribed risky medications, By Karen de Sá, August 23, 2014, San Jose Mercury News: “They are wrenched from abusive homes, uprooted again and again, often with their life’s belongings stuffed into a trash bag. Abandoned and alone, they are among California’s most powerless children. But instead of providing a stable home and caring family, the state’s foster care system gives them a pill. With alarming frequency, foster and health care providers are turning to a risky but convenient remedy to control the behavior of thousands of troubled kids: numbing them with psychiatric drugs that are untested on and often not approved for children. An investigation by this newspaper found that nearly 1 out of every 4 adolescents in California’s foster care system is receiving these drugs — 3 times the rate for all adolescents nationwide. Over the last decade, almost 15 percent of the state’s foster children of all ages were prescribed the medications, known as psychotropics, part of a national treatment trend that is only beginning to receive broad scrutiny…”
Month: August 2014
Bolsa Familia Program – Brazil
Social workers channel Indiana Jones to deliver welfare checks to Brazil’s Amazon, By Stephen Kurczy, August 27, 2014, Christian Science Monitor: “The orange boat racing up the Amazon River tributary is loaded with the essentials for fighting poverty in the jungle: a chainsaw and a dozen social workers. The river has swollen some 60 feet with the rainy season, and the captain looks out for logs and branches that might rip into the hull. He’s also looking for signs of human life in this dense jungle, one of the poorest regions in Brazil’s vast territory. The boat turns down an inlet nearly invisible through the dense green overgrowth, and the team spots an elderly man casting a fishing net. It’s apparent he’s blind as he feels his way to shore, his right thumb missing from a past piranha attack. ‘How good is God?’ the man calls out, his skin rough and wrinkled like worn leather. ‘I’ve been praying for you to come, and suddenly you’re here,’ he tells the social workers. This expedition is part of Busca Ativa, or ‘active search,’ a federal program to extend social welfare entitlements to the hardest-to-reach areas of Brazil…”
Poor Students, Elite Colleges
Generation later, poor are still rare at elite colleges, By Richard Pérez-Peña, August 25, 2014, New York Times: “As the shaded quadrangles of the nation’s elite campuses stir to life for the start of the academic year, they remain bastions of privilege. Amid promises to admit more poor students, top colleges educate roughly the same percentage of them as they did a generation ago. This is despite the fact that there are many high school seniors from low-income homes with top grades and scores: twice the percentage in the general population as at elite colleges…”